As society is becoming increasingly mobile through the greatly expanded use of cars, more and more families engage in outdoor recreational activities, such as picnics. While, often times, people will seek to use pre-existing picnic facilities, such as tables and benches at parks and other large open spaces, these are generally very popular and may be unavailable for use for long periods until vacated. Many people prefer to picnic by themselves in more natural surroundings where no pre-existing picnic facilities are available. Also, organized outdoor entertainment is often staged in parks where there may similarly be no permanent picnic facilities. These circumstances generally lead to the use of a picnic blanket or the like, which is uncomfortable and often untidy. Thus, there is a growing need for a portable informal dining facility for outdoor recreational use in a form that is compact, lightweight, easy to transport and able to provide a table and seating therefor.
Commonly, fold-up tables and fold-up chairs, along with thermally insulated containers (such as ESKIES) and picnic baskets, are carried to picnic sites, usually by several people or by a single person struggling to carry them all on one trip or more comfortably on several trips from their car. Attempts have been made to reduce this burden by providing collapsible table and bench assemblies which are a single, multiply foldable unit that, when collapsed, forms a hand held carry case. However, because it must be transported by hand, it cannot exceed a certain weight or size, and so has no or very limited storage capacity for any other picnic items.
It has been found by the present inventor that these problems can be overcome by providing a mobile, collapsible table and storage assembly for outdoor recreational use that is able to be transformed by the user between, in one instance, a wheeled storage compartment for foldable chairs and like recreational items and, in another instance, a table around which the chairs can be placed.